Rageh Omaar
Boards now want a clean read on conflict, sanctions exposure, and shifting alliances before they sign off on capital decisions. The voices that sound confident on cable news rarely have the field history to be useful in a room of senior leaders. What organisations need is someone who has reported the story from the ground and can hold a serious on-stage conversation about it without theatre.
Rageh Omaar is ITV News’ International Affairs Editor and one of the UK’s most experienced foreign correspondents, brought into corporate and policy events to anchor conversations on geopolitics, the Middle East and Africa with the authority of someone who has covered those stories from the ground.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Rageh Omaar
- A reporting record built on the ground in Baghdad, Kabul, Darfur and across the wider Middle East and Africa, not a studio commentator with borrowed authority
- A Peabody for BBC dispatches from Darfur and a BAFTA for the BBC’s Afghanistan coverage, two of the most demanding awards in international news
- A daily editorial seat at ITV News that keeps his read on conflict, sanctions and the international order current rather than retrospective
- A track record chairing senior-stakes events for Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, The Economist and DNV in Oslo, where the brief is to keep a difficult conversation moving without flattening it
Biography highlights
- International Affairs Editor, ITV News, and presenter on ITV News at Ten and the current affairs strand On Assignment
- Former senior BBC foreign correspondent, the lead face of BBC News during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the only western television journalist inside Taliban-held Kabul as it fell in 2001
- Peabody Award winner for BBC reporting from Darfur, BAFTA winner for the BBC’s coverage of the invasion of Afghanistan
- Presenter of Witness and The Rageh Omaar Report on Al Jazeera English between 2006 and 2010
- Author of Revolution Day: The Real Story of the Battle for Iraq (Penguin) and Only Half of Me: Being a Muslim in Britain (Viking)
- Authored long-form documentary series for the BBC including The Life of Muhammad (BBC Two) and The Ottomans: Europe’s Muslim Emperors (BBC Two)
Biography
Baghdad in March 2003 was the first conflict of the modern news cycle, fought as much through television as through the air. Rageh Omaar led the BBC’s coverage from inside the city as the bombing began, and his nightly dispatches became, for British and international audiences, the picture of how the war was unfolding. The reporting won him an international audience and a permanent association with the most difficult kind of foreign coverage, journalism done from the place the story is happening.
The career sits on a longer record. Omaar was the only western television journalist inside Taliban-held Kabul as it fell in 2001, work that earned the BBC a BAFTA. His subsequent reporting from Darfur for the BBC was recognised with a Peabody, the most stringent broadcast journalism prize awarded in the United States. After a period at Al Jazeera English presenting Witness and The Rageh Omaar Report, he moved to ITV News in 2013 and was promoted to International Affairs Editor a year later.
Beyond breaking news, his work has consistently turned to the long story of the Islamic world and its relationship with Europe. Documentary series including The Life of Muhammad and The Ottomans: Europe’s Muslim Emperors, both for BBC Two, sit alongside his books Revolution Day and Only Half of Me, the second a study of British Muslim identity drawn partly from his own Somali-British background. That body of work is what differentiates him from a general-purpose news anchor when corporate audiences want a serious on-stage conversation about the Middle East, Africa or the wider rules-based order.
On the platform, he is engaged most often as moderator, chair and interviewer for senior audiences at firms including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, The Economist and DNV. The brief in those rooms is to handle a sensitive subject in front of a room that knows the surface of it, and to draw out a guest or a panel without letting the conversation drift. That is the craft he brings, supported by reporting credentials that let him hold the room when the topic is geopolitics rather than industry talk.
Key speaking topics
- Geopolitics and international affairs
- The Middle East and the rules-based order
- Africa, conflict and economic development
- Foreign reporting and the modern news cycle
- Islam, identity and the West
- Conference moderation, panel chairing and on-stage interviewing
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees commissioning a serious on-stage conversation on geopolitical risk, the Middle East or Africa
- Annual conferences and global leadership offsites that need a credible chair for the international-affairs session
- Policy, energy and financial-services events where the moderator must hold authority on conflict, sanctions and political risk
- Corporate award ceremonies and after-dinner formats that require a recognisable broadcaster with substance behind the name
Audience outcomes
- A grounded read on the international story currently shaping board-level decisions, drawn from a working editor’s seat rather than archive material
- A clearer sense of how the Middle East and Africa look from inside the reporting, beyond the cable news framing
- An on-stage conversation or panel that holds together at the level senior audiences expect, with difficult questions asked and not avoided
- A frame for thinking about Islam, identity and the West that comes from sustained reporting and writing, not commentary